Langfeld, Herbert Sidney

Basic Biographical Information

Born: July 24, 1879; Died: February 25, 1958

Langfeld’s early education was gained in Philadelphia schools and Haverford College. His first career was as a secretary to the US Naval attaché in Germany. There, in 1903, he decided to pursue advanced studies in psychology under Carl Stumpf in Berlin, receiving the doctorate in 1909. One of the last Americans to study psychology in Germany, he returned to America and taught at Harvard until 1924, mentoring Floyd Allport whose dissertation he supervised. Langfeld also counseled Gordon Allport. When E. B. Titchener complained about Allport’s choice of personality traits as a subject for research, Allport said that Langfeld remarked “You don’t care what Titchener thinks,” confirming him in his vocation (Allport 1967). In 1924, after the arrival of E. G. Boring at Harvard, Langfeld became Howard C. Warren’s colleague at Princeton University, bringing with him Leonard Carmichael and also enticing E. B. Holt out...